Dear Reader,
I last wrote right before I moved into my new house, knowing that I would be shaken pretty profoundly from my routines and wouldn’t be writing for a while. But I’m here now.
I had forgotten my word for the year. Every year I choose a word to set the tone or aspiration, and although I’m not thinking about it every day I generally have an awareness of what my word means to me and how it’s evolving as the year goes on. But this year, I just forgot. It was presence. Presence.
A lot has happened this year, stuff that makes me not want to be present, that explains why I have listened to probably 100 hours of Office Ladies instead of doing anything that would make me feel into my body, that would bring my mind back to what’s right in front of me. My personal life has been great: We are thriving in our new home as a non-monogamous family unit. I am bringing new queer friendship into my life in a way I really haven’t before. Finances finally feel abundant. Although I did recently have my first tango with covid, my health has been stable. But there has also been the persistent nightmare of Supreme Court rulings, mass shootings, fires, floods, and war.
Accompanying all of this happiness has been a parallel current of self-worthlessness, feeling like I don’t deserve anything that I have, that I have not suffered enough to earn my current prosperity, wondering why I should not suffer when others do. It’s been a familiar refrain over the past few years, but I think I’m starting to find my way out of this destructive spiral.
Recently I checked in again with the tarot for the first time in a long time. I have generally been very identified with water cards: the High Priestess is my birth card, the Queen of Cups often acts as my signifier, and generally the cards that have felt like they speak to me are cards are introspective and connected to feeling and intuition. One of those particularly was the 8 of Cups.
A few years ago, the 8 of Cups turned up for me in a series of powerful readings. I was at a point in my life where I had chosen to leave the path of academia—which I had been focused on for the previous 13 years—to do something that was unknown, but felt more in alignment with my aspirations and what I wanted to contribute to the world. In the Waite-Smith deck, the 8 of Cups is a person walking away from a stack of cups out into a mountainous landscape, turning their back on what is known or assured for pursuits that are perhaps more spiritual or inward-turning. At the time, this card felt like a balm to me.
But recently I realized that I was no longer in an 8 of Cups place in my life, that I could not stay inward forever, that I could not always be turning away. I had to turn towards something eventually. So I did a reading where I pulled the 8 of Cups out and asked the deck what a new direction for me is. And I got the King of Pentacles.
I was both surprised and alarmed by this. I had never, ever, identified myself with the King of Anything, let alone the King of Pentacles. I had thought that card was about control, about hoarding wealth, about making money at others’ expense. It had never occurred to me to think about this card in relation to my self, much less how I could be embodying the energy of this card. And yet after the initial surprise passed, it began to make sense: I am in a stable, abundant place right now and I am turning my energy outward bit by bit after spending many years turned inward. I am in love with my body right now and feel sexier at 37 than I ever have because I have learned to confidently embody my queerness. I am giving more money away. And I am ready, I think, to finally create the healing spaces that I have been wanting to for years.
And so a few announcements and changes: although I have been on hiatus a while, I am officially ending my offerings of tarot readings. I love, love reading tarot for people. The connections I have made as a tarot reader have been so nourishing and sweet. As a work of service, reading tarot gives me so much life and energy. That being said, I also started my tarot business back when I was much less sure about my financial future. I am no longer in a place where I need to supplement my income with readings and I really want to gather my energy in to focus on what is more important to me right now, which is:
Offering the Work That Reconnects, especially for queer people. I was certified as a WTR facilitator right before the pandemic, but the pandemic has scared me so much about getting together in groups and I doubted my ability to lead sessions online (even though I have facilitated other spaces online just fine.) My hope is to start doing in-person sessions this fall, but I am also opening myself to the possibility of doing things online as well. May it be so, Architect* of Earth, Fire of Earth.
In gratitude to you,
Emily
I don’t talk about bookbinding that much here, although the name of this newsletter is The Bone Folder because a bone folder is one of the best tools in existence. Making a book is something that can always, without fail, get me into a flow state like no other pursuit can.
One thing that I don’t do very much of, however, is document my bookbinding projects and I’d like to change that. So here are some photos of a book I recently made as a gift. Half-bound long-stitch with Arrestox book cloth, Florentine tarot-print paper, Strathmore 300 series text paper, linen thread, and book boards that I think came out of some IKEA packaging.
Sharing
I have been taking a class with Zoë of Thirdspace Somatics—my first experience with the practice of somatics—and it has absolutely been a delight. I found Zoë through her podcast and when I saw that she runs periodic practice groups, I wanted to join. Zoë has another 10-week course coming up and if you are looking for some tender queer space to explore your relationship with embodiment, I really recommend it.
**The language of “Architect” as a title for the tarot Kings comes from the Slow Holler Tarot. The King of Pentacles rules the suit of Earth/Pentacles, and as a King his elemental affinity is Fire.